


Everything is Turning Blue

by cashewdani



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: F/M, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-08
Updated: 2007-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She looks in the mirror and doesn’t recognize herself.  She’s not this woman and she’s changed somewhere and somehow and completely missed the transformation.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything is Turning Blue

_**I’m happy with you,  
the way things are – Robin**_

 

“If this is about juice, call your boyfriend.”

Robin doesn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t that. “Barney, it’s not about juice. Why would it be about juice?”

“You make it sound like it would be impossible for you and me to juice together. I’m hurt, Scherbatsky.”

“You’re not.”

She can hear the scoff and for a moment everything seems normal and then instantly it just isn’t again. “Yeah, you caught me. But seriously, it’s like 12:30 in the morning. I thought that all couples turned into furniture or something by this time.”

“Furniture?”

“It’s a theory.” He pauses, and when she doesn’t say anything he follows with, “Robin, you’re the one that called me.”

“I don’t know. It was stupid, I’m sorry. I don’t even really know why I called.” And she doesn’t. Maybe it wouldn’t be Ted, because she’s scared of the way he’ll react. That he’ll be happier than her. But if not Ted, than surely Lily would be next. Lily is a girl who knows all about the right things to say and the next thing to do. But she called Barney.

“Look, do you want me to come over? I’m already in a cab.” Once he says that, she knows why. The only thing he could have been doing was a girl, and she still thinks for some reason that he would have left.

“Yes. Please.”

“See you in a few,” and he’s hung up before she can say good-bye. She’s back to the quiet and her own thoughts and she misses her dogs right then feeling guilty for it being the first time that twinge has fired in awhile. 

She’s thinking about her disapproving intakes of breath at Ted and how they weren’t really about pot lids or a dirty coffee table or TV before bed. They were about change, which just so happened to be change caused by Ted. And when they first discussed moving in together it hadn’t seemed like such a colossal deal.

She’s also thinking about vices, as she pours another glass of wine that she can only stare at like all the others she’s been pouring for two days now. The cigarette had been a slip, a mistake, and even though she’d told herself it was a last hurrah because of Ted moving in, she knew deep down what she’d really meant.

He finally rings the doorbell, right at the moment when she feels like she’s going to sink down on her knees in the living room and bawl her eyes out. She isn’t surprised at all that as soon as she gets the door open she’s got her arms wrapped around him.

He apparently is because he drops the plastic bag that he’s carrying, and it’s almost like his limbs don’t know how to reciprocate. “Whoa, did you and Ted break up?”

The way he says it, like it could happen just like that, makes her feel sick right in the pit of her stomach. She lets him go and like her world may be falling apart, “Why would you think that?”

“It was option number two on a list of two things.”

“What was the first?” He picks the bag up and hands it to her and inside is a pregnancy test. “How did you get this?”

“Have you seriously been in the city all this time and never once recognized that Duane Reades, as a rule, never close?”

She’s just holding the box, staring at it, finding it impossible to look at his face. “I thought I was hiding it.”

“Really? Because you didn’t have anything to drink last night.” He points at the full glass sitting on her coffee table as if he walked in on a murderer holding the smoking gun. “And I rest my case.”

She has to get the thing out of her hands and she’s shoving it back in the bag while thrusting it at him. “This isn’t why I called.”

He doesn’t call her a liar, and he doesn’t laugh. “Just take it.”

“My period’s only two days late.” 

She wants him to shudder because that’s what Barney should do. He should be disgusted with the word period and he should be making jokes about Ted’s potent sperm and not buying her pregnancy tests. But instead he stands there, steadfast and in the exact same tone and intonation repeats “take it.”

He leads her to the bathroom, even walks her inside and opens the box up to make her read the directions. He tells her he’ll wait outside and closes the door behind him while she stands there, hands shaking.

Before he got here she was just being silly. She was stressed. She was tired from work. It was just going to go away because it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing because Barney noticed. Barney noticed and Ted didn’t and Barney was the one standing in her hallway waiting for her to pee on a stick and Robin doesn’t know when this became her life.

There’s supposed to be two blue lines if you’re someone who dreams about what color to paint a nursery. Robin stares at the stick and watches one line form, and prays for the next five minutes in a way she hasn’t done since she can’t even remember. In the end there’s only the one and she feels deflated even though it’s what she wanted.

She looks in the mirror and doesn’t recognize herself. She’s not this woman and she’s changed somewhere and somehow and completely missed the transformation.

When she finally leaves the bathroom, he’s still standing there with his hands in his pockets. She can’t say the words, so she just nods her head side to side. He hugs her this time, and she fits into the crook under his chin smelling the starch of his shirt and worrying about smearing her foundation on his tie.

After she’s calmer he says, “I hope you washed your hands” and he gets her to smile and give him a little push to the shoulder.

“No one hears about this. Especially not Ted.”

“Please, like I want to go around telling people I bought a pregnancy test and went over to a chick’s apartment after midnight and nothing happened.”

She knows the words sound harsh, and that someone else probably would take offense, but she doesn’t. She understands what he’s saying. “Thank you.”

He kisses her cheek on the way out of the apartment, and lets her know that if she needs anything, he’s only a phone call and a drugstore visit away.

The silence returns as soon as the door latches back into place and she knows she needs to call Ted. “Hey, do you want to go for a walk?” Her voice in her own head sounds kind of manic, and she knows that the fact that she’s about to cry is also completely obvious. And even though it’s late and he has a meeting in the morning, she must be pitiful because he comes.

They walk, and it’s not cold but she keeps kind of shivering, so he gives her his jacket. When he lowers it onto her shoulders, she sighs like it’s a burden and Ted knows. “We’re breaking up aren’t we?”

Her voice is calm, and almost a little relieved. “Yeah, Ted. I think we are.” 

When they pass a bench they sit and it’s quiet, and for some reason they’re holding hands. It takes him awhile, but he is finally able to ask her, “Why?”

This is the first time she’s looked at him all night, really looked at him, and a part of him wishes she hadn’t. “Because you deserve someone who’s not afraid of the future.”

They don’t say anything else until he walks her back and leaves her at her personalized welcome mat, and then it’s only good-bye. Robin loves him, and she knows that even though this hurts, it’s what she needs to do.

She goes to bed, and thinks about calling Barney to tell him both options were right in the end. But instead she just holds her knees up to her chest and cries because even though she’s changed, she still wishes she was someone different.


End file.
